National Health Crisis: US Inner-City Kids Suffer "War-Zone"-Like PTSD

BBC’s ‘America First?’ series sent Aleem Maqbool, a North America correspondent, to the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia, where he uncovered a rather shocking statistic in which 46% of the inner city residents suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a rate that is much higher than U.S. soldiers (10-20%).

Maqbool describes Atlanta’s inner city environment as a “war zone”, where death and destruction are contributing to high levels of PTSD in adults and children. He further quoted researchers and said levels of PTSD in America’s inner cities are comparable to refugee populations around the world.

To make matters worse, the video makes the claim: gun murder rates (per 100,000) in the US are at astronomical levels when compared to other countries. A startling find, when considering the US, the richest country in the world, does not perform well in the international rankings.

As the crisis spreads, PTSD in children and young adults are sparking a public health crisis, where traumatic events are negatively influencing brain development.

This is already having a significant effect on inner-city youth, who already suffer from broken families, drug abuse, education inequality, and wealth inequality.

Back in 2016, President Trump told the American people the true state of the inner cities. He correctly labeled the areas across the country, a “war zone” (see below).

"The Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities,” Trump said. “For those hurting the most, who have been failed and failed by their politicians, year after year, failure after failure, worse numbers after worse numbers, poverty, rejection, horrible education, no houses, no homes, no ownership, crime at levels that nobody has seen. You could go to war zones in countries that we’re fighting and it’s safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats.”

 

“It is a disaster the way African-Americans are living in many cases and in many cases the way Hispanics are living,” Trump continued. “And I say it with such a deep felt feeling, what do you have to lose? I’ll straighten it out. I’ll bring jobs back, We’ll bring spirit back. I’ll get rid of the crime, so you’ll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

America’s once hustling and bustling inner cities are contracting in terms of economic productivity and in some cases population. Atlanta’s inner city war zone is not the only city dealing with death and destruction, which raises our eyebrow because children who are suffering from war zone PTSD is much more widespread than thought, making it an unrecognized national public health crisis. As per MSN, America’s most dangerous inner cities:

• DETROIT, MICHIGAN: Violent crime rate: 2,047 per 100,000


• ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: Violent crime rate: 1,913 per 100,000


• MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE: Violent crime rate: 1,820 per 100,000


• BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: Violent crime rate: 1,780 per 100,000


• ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS: Violent crime rate: 1,659 per 100,000


• KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: Violent crime rate: 1,655 per 100,000


• CLEVELAND, OHIO: Violent crime rate: 1,631 per 100,000

Like Alcoholics Anonymous, President Trump submitted the inner cities into America Anonymous, a 12 step program to get the country back on the right path. The first step is admitting there is a problem, which was completed in 2016, with eleven more steps to go, who said this was going to be an easy rebuild?

It’s time the American people awaken from their decades’ long sleep and learn the truth about the disastrous mistakes government has made in governing this country.

In the medium range, Americans will have to start stomaching the consequences of bad policies in the form of an entire generation of children who are suffering from PTSD and the ramifications surrounding brain development.

If Student Loans Were Honest

Hey, a lot, and enough beer and good jokes will purchase you pussy, but i"m paying my student loans off steadily and quickly and will be done before age 30 (much earlier if i stop being lazy). My car will be paid in a year and a half, got it half a year ago unlike these 72 month idiots, and it"s a fast german one.

I grew up with basically no money (worked as a dishwasher at age 16 which is the minimum here and even that was killer). $7 an hour and even then i knew how stupid the fkin minimum wage was. My parents paid a very small fraction of my college cost. This is definitely NOT to excuse our moneyprinting communist satanic NWO overlords for roping 18 year olds with IQ"s equal to their age in years into $100k loans, just saying that some people can leverage loans properly, even in a bullshit fed-induced bubble climate. They can distort the market, but we are smarter (especially here at ZH!).

BTW Manthong, you are one of the best posters on here, and i"m in agreement with you here. Just felt like riffing off what you were saying.

Dilbert's Scott Adams Explains "How To Know You're In A Mass Hysteria Bubble"

Authored by Scott Adams via Dilbert blog,

History is full of examples of Mass Hysterias. They happen fairly often. The cool thing about mass hysterias is that you don’t know when you are in one. But sometimes the people who are not experiencing the mass hysteria can recognize when others are experiencing one, if they know what to look for.

I’ll teach you what to look for.

A mass hysteria happens when the public gets a wrong idea about something that has strong emotional content and it triggers cognitive dissonance that is often supported by confirmation bias. In other words, people spontaneously hallucinate a whole new (and usually crazy-sounding) reality and believe they see plenty of evidence for it. The Salem Witch Trials are the best-known example of mass hysteria. The McMartin Pre-School case and the Tulip Bulb hysteria are others. The dotcom bubble probably qualifies. We might soon learn that the Russian Collusion story was mass hysteria in hindsight. The curious lack of solid evidence for Russian collusion is a red flag. But we’ll see how that plays out.

The most visible Mass Hysteria of the moment involves the idea that the United States intentionally elected a racist President. If that statement just triggered you, it might mean you are in the Mass Hysteria bubble. The cool part is that you can’t fact-check my claim you are hallucinating if you are actually hallucinating. But you can read my description of the signs of mass hysteria and see if you check off the boxes.

If you’re in the mass hysteria, recognizing you have all the symptoms of hysteria won’t help you be aware you are in it. That’s not how hallucinations work. Instead, your hallucination will automatically rewrite itself to expel any new data that conflicts with its illusions.

But if you are not experiencing mass hysteria, you might be totally confused by the actions of the people who are. They appear to be irrational, but in ways that are hard to define. You can’t tell if they are stupid, unscrupulous, ignorant, mentally ill, emotionally unstable or what. It just looks frickin’ crazy.

The reason you can’t easily identify what-the-hell is going on in the country right now is that a powerful mass hysteria is in play.

If you see the signs after I point them out, you’re probably not in the hysteria bubble.

If you read this and do NOT see the signs, it probably means you’re trapped inside the mass hysteria bubble.

Here are some signs of mass hysteria. This is my own take on it, but I welcome you to fact-check it with experts on mass hysteria.

1. The trigger event for cognitive dissonance

On November 8th of 2016, half the country learned that everything they believed to be both true and obvious turned out to be wrong. The people who thought Trump had no chance of winning were under the impression they were smart people who understood their country, and politics, and how things work in general. When Trump won, they learned they were wrong. They were so very wrong that they reflexively (because this is how all brains work) rewrote the scripts they were seeing in their minds until it all made sense again. The wrong-about-everything crowd decided that the only way their world made sense, with their egos intact, is that either the Russians helped Trump win or there are far more racists in the country than they imagined, and he is their king. Those were the seeds of the two mass hysterias we witness today.

Trump supporters experienced no trigger event for cognitive dissonance when Trump won. Their worldview was confirmed by observed events.

2. The Ridiculousness of it 

One sign of a good mass hysteria is that it sounds bonkers to anyone who is not experiencing it. Imagine your neighbor telling you he thinks the other neighbor is a witch. Or imagine someone saying the local daycare provider is a satanic temple in disguise. Or imagine someone telling you tulip bulbs are more valuable than gold. Crazy stuff.

Compare that to the idea that our president is a Russian puppet. Or that the country accidentally elected a racist who thinks the KKK and Nazis are “fine people.” Crazy stuff.

If you think those examples don’t sound crazy – regardless of the reality – you are probably inside the mass hysteria bubble.

3. The Confirmation Bias

If you are inside the mass hysteria bubble, you probably interpreted President Trump’s initial statement on Charlottesville – which was politically imperfect to say the least – as proof-positive he is a damned racist.

If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble you might have noticed that President Trump never campaigned to be our moral leader. He presented himself as – in his own words “no angel” – with a set of skills he offered to use in the public’s interest. He was big on law and order, and equal justice under the law. But he never offered moral leadership. Voters elected him with that knowledge. Evidently, Republicans don’t depend on politicians for moral leadership. That’s probably a good call.

When the horror in Charlottesville shocked the country, citizens instinctively looked to their president for moral leadership. The president instead provided a generic law and order statement. Under pressure, he later named specific groups and disavowed the racists. He was clearly uncomfortable being our moral lighthouse. That’s probably why he never described his moral leadership as an asset when running for office. We observe that he has never been shy about any other skill he brings to the job, so it probably isn’t an accident when he avoids mentioning any ambitions for moral leadership. If he wanted us to know he would provide that service, I think he would have mentioned it by now.

If you already believed President Trump is a racist, his weak statement about Charlottesville seems like confirmation. But if you believe he never offered moral leadership, only equal treatment under the law, that’s what you saw instead. And you made up your own mind about the morality. 

The tricky part here is that any interpretation of what happened could be confirmation bias. But ask yourself which one of these versions sounds less crazy:

1. A sitting president, who is a branding expert, thought it would be a good idea to go easy on murderous Nazis as a way to improve his popularity.

or…

2. The country elected a racist leader who is winking to the KKK and White Supremacists that they have a free pass to start a race war now.

or…

3. A mentally unstable racist clown with conman skills (mostly just lying) eviscerated the Republican primary field and won the presidency. He keeps doing crazy, impulsive racist stuff. But for some reason, the economy is going well, jobs are looking good, North Korea blinked, ISIS is on the ropes, and the Supreme Court got a qualified judge. It was mostly luck.

or…

4. The guy who didn’t offer to be your moral leader didn’t offer any moral leadership, just law and order, applied equally. His critics cleverly and predictably framed it as being soft on Nazis.

One of those narratives is less crazy-sounding than the others. That doesn’t mean the less-crazy one has to be true. But normal stuff happens far more often than crazy stuff. And critics will frame normal stuff as crazy whenever they get a chance.

4. The Oversized Reaction

It would be hard to overreact to a Nazi murder, or to racists marching in the streets with torches. That stuff demands a strong reaction. But if a Republican agrees with you that Nazis are the worst, and you threaten to punch that Republican for not agreeing with you exactly the right way, that might be an oversized reaction. 

5. The Insult without supporting argument

When people have actual reasons for disagreeing with you, they offer those reasons without hesitation. Strangers on social media will cheerfully check your facts, your logic, and your assumptions. But when you start seeing ad hominem attacks that offer no reasons at all, that might be a sign that people in the mass hysteria bubble don’t understand what is wrong with your point of view except that it sounds more sensible than their own. 

For the past two days I have been disavowing Nazis on Twitter. The most common response from the people who agree with me is that my comic strip sucks and I am ugly.

*  *  *

The mass hysteria signals I described here are not settled science, or anything like it. This is only my take on the topic, based on personal observation and years of experience with hypnosis and other forms of persuasion.

I present this filter on the situation as the first step in dissolving the mass hysteria. It isn’t enough, but more persuasion is coming.

If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble, you might see what I am doing in this blog as a valuable public service.

If you are inside the mass hysteria bubble, I look like a Nazi collaborator.

How do I look to you?

*  *  *

Adams wrote a book about how to persuade yourself to success. Based on reader comments, it is working. His upcoming book, Win Bigly, tells you how to persuade others. (For good.) That comes out October 31st.

Does Hope Trump Reality?

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal.

“Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.

"They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

The Fed’s balance sheet will not be growing unless we have another market crash.

• GDP barely grew in the 1st quarter.


• Stock valuations are at all-time highs.


• The auto industry has begun to implode.


• Corporate profits are falling.


• Retailers are declaring bankruptcies and closing stores like we’re in the midst of a depression.


• Wages for the average person are stagnant. Real household income is declining when using real inflation numbers.

Hope can work for awhile but it eventually runs head on into reality.

We are living in a hope driven, profoundly abnormal society. 

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

-Red – The Shawshank Redemption

“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.”

President Snow – Hunger Games

People don’t realize it, but danger is lurking just over the horizon.

'Sound Money' Debate Exposes The Ignorance Of Politicians (Again)

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Proving once again that our elected representatives appear to have absolutely no clue, we turn to Democrat Idaho House Minority Leader Mat Erpelding.

The Sound Money Defense League reports:

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the idea that low-ability people tend to suffer from illusory superiority. The phenomenon, first studied by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, says that people who know the least tend to overvalue their own competence, and tend to believe that they are experiencing some sort of upper-echelon level of thinking.

While the original study was conducted in 1999, we witnessed what appeared to be the Dunning-Kruger effect in action this past Tuesday on the floor of the Idaho House of Representatives.

And while it’s only March, we also have identified the front-runner for our “Aurophobe of the Year” award.  (Aurophobia is the irrational fear of gold.)

During the March 14^th floor debate on Idaho’s House Bill 206, a measure that promotes sound money by removing Idaho income taxation from precious metals, Democrat Representative Mat Erpelding — the House Minority Leader — couldn’t help himself and had to share his two cents, even after asserting that he had no opinion on the bill (but then voted against it).

The quote itself is shockingly obtuse and ignorant:

I do have an opinion of facts and facts are somewhat important… and if we say that gold is going to protect us from inflation, I want to point out that in 1868 gold was $27 an ounce and today gold is $1,218 an ounce… so you can’t say gold is going to protect us from inflation when you have that type of a price range over the last hundred years… So i just want to point out that facts are important.

Yes, that actually happened and here’s the video to prove it:

Why Do Leftists And Globalists Hate Tribalism So Much?

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Over the years I have heard the word “tribalism” used consistently as a way to deride and attack conservative groups with political stances outside the boundaries of globalization. Many readers have been exposed to this propaganda recently as “tribalism” becomes the go-to denouncement of the Trump Administration. From The Atlantic to CNBC to The Washington Post and beyond, tribalism is used almost as often as the fascist label, and there are very specific reasons for this.

Tribalism (like nationalism and populism) has slowly but surely been falsely associated with totalitarianism, as if the two are synonymous. The use of “tribalism” as a dismissal of sovereignty concepts is a distinctly globalist and leftist habit; clearly, they hate the very notion of it, so much so that they have sought to turn it into a four letter word. But why?

The fact of the matter is, tribalism revolves around sets of principles; meaning, some people hold principles that are completely incompatible with other people"s principles. Some principles simply cannot be reconciled with other principles, and they cannot coexist. Groups tend to form around principles, and thus, certain groups cannot live in close proximity with other groups. When they do live in close proximity, one will invariably absorb the other or destroy the other.

This is more likely to occur when two groups have diametrically opposing views rather than minor deviations and disagreements.

For example, the mass injection of millions of Muslim immigrants into European nations has in a very short period of time resulted in the steady decline of Western ideals and even the decline of legal frameworks in the areas where the immigrants concentrate. Sharia law is a direct antithesis to traditional Western values such as religious freedom, free speech, freedom of association, individual rights, economic independence, free markets, etc. (It is interesting to note that western socialists and communist ideals run parallel to Muslim culture when it comes to the desire to dismantle sovereignty.) The effects of this clash of principles are quite obvious at this point.

Sharia-based groups have been transplanted into the Western sphere in what I consider a deliberate Cloward-Piven strategy of cultural destabilization of Europe.

These groups do not assimilate, they devour the surrounding culture and turn it into something that sublimates in accordance with their principles. This is why the leftist and globalist call for “multiculturalism” is nonsensical. You cannot have two or more diametrically opposed cultures within the same society — one of them has to take precedence over all the others. Globalists in particular KNOW this is the reality, and they use multiculturalism as a means to undermine nations specifically built upon traditional sovereign values.

Leftists are in most cases merely useful idiots that promote multiculturalism as a means of “penance.” That is to say, they believe that traditional western culture should be punished for past transgressions and in due course, phased out completely in exchange for a new utopian system.

Both leftists and globalists will often try to argue that if tribalism was not prevalent there would be no ill will between Muslims and Westerners or any other groups for that matter. But, as stated earlier, what they are glossing over is the inevitability of groups separating based on principals.  The only way for all groups to coexist in close proximity in the multicultural paradise we are being sold is for ALL value systems to be eliminated except for one. And perhaps that is the point.

Globalists prefer an outcome in which traditional values are erased and replaced with a “new world order” mindset; a system that is rooted in collectivist suppression of individual liberty, where freedom is exchanged for “harmony;” one global tribe worshiping one global god — the state.

The existence of tribalism might lead to conflicts if opposing cultures are deliberately mashed together, but it also makes the formation of a single overarching tyranny very difficult. Globalists seek to irritate existing divisions and trigger chaos between groups because ultimately, they want to demonize the very concept of tribalism and make way for a one world ideal that fits THEIR agenda.

Leftists are decidedly less self aware on why they fight so hard against tribalism. They see cultural division of any kind on the part of the west as inherently evil. Ironically, when it comes to so called “victim groups” like Muslims, social-justice warriors will argue that their aggressively divisive behavior is off limits to criticism because you have to be “from that culture to understand it”.  So, tribalism on the part of designated victim groups is beyond reproach, and tribalism on the part of westerners is a cancer that must be eradicated.

To reiterate, leftists love tribalism initiated by those they consider victim groups.  They only hate tribalism when it is initiated by conservatives and the traditional western middle class.  The double standard is evident.

Exactly what is happening here? Well, we are being given a false choice. We are offered tribalism at the cost of endless social crisis (which is being deliberately instigated), or, the erasure of tribalism and traditional principles for the sake of “peace.”  No other solutions are being presented.

Liberty proponents like myself would point out that there is an underlying principle within natural law that could solve many of the problems that arise between groups with differing world views without sacrificing everything to join a one-world collectivist hive mind. That rule would be the “Non-Aggression Principle.”  To summarize, the non-aggression principle holds that no person or group has the right to impose their beliefs or will on another person or group. The only time force of action is warranted is in self defense and the defense of innocents.

If a society was to operate by the rule of non-aggression, and people were to abide by that rule, then most groups and cultures could live peacefully. For the people who do not abide, removal from that society or nation would be necessary. This is the intrinsic advantage of tribalism in its purest form; tribalism allows us to discriminate against groups with destructive principles and behaviors, or against those that have different objectives. Some divisions are useful divisions. This allows for a group with shared goals to accomplish those goals without constant internal obstruction or sabotage. As long as the non-aggression principle is adhered to, tribalism is the ideal system.

Of course, there are certain groups that are incapable of accepting this dynamic.

Leftist ideology depends upon thought control and manipulation in order to remain relevant. Because their values are not based in logic or self examination, they don’t have the ability to win people over through compelling arguments; all they have are lies and force. When in power, they use the force of government. When out of power, they use the threat of the mob. If tribalism and the non-aggression principle were to thrive, the leftists in their current form would represent a failed group, and they would fade away.

Globalists see themselves as social architects, and an architect cannot function if his building materials will not cooperate. Globalism is impotent without the ability to impose will and the ability to undermine practical divisions between ideological opposites. Tribalism in the name of sovereignty and free society is an impassable wall to globalization. Their only option is to utilize and exploit groups that are anti-liberty as a weapon against existing societies that still have some basis in sovereignty. This is much easier to do when anti-liberty groups are organized within those free systems, or, when they are imported into them. A strong, free people cannot be destroyed from without, they can only be destroyed from within.

Social divisions are absolutely rational and healthy, and there is nothing “evil” or totalitarian about organizing only with people that share your values. The real evil comes from those that would suppress our values in the name of “harmonization” — there is no such thing.  Globalists and leftists argue for the adoption and toleration of all ideologies and principles as a means to peace, but what they really want in the end is the erasure of all the ideologies and principles they see as disagreeable in order to make way for their own.

Democrats Question Trump's Sanity, Blasted For "Weaponizing Mental Health"

The desperation is becoming grotesque as the left"s inability to move through the stages of grief is ever more evident.

In the latest farcical attempt to create a narrative, as The Hill reports, a growing number of Democrats are openly questioning President Trump’s mental health.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) in a floor speech this week called for a review of the Constitution"s procedures for removing a president. He warned the 25th Amendment of the Constitution falls short when it comes to mental or emotional fitness for office.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) during a weekend interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” said that “a few” Republican colleagues have expressed concern to him about Trump"s mental health.

And Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) plans to introduce legislation that would require the presence of a psychiatrist or psychologist in the White House.

The Democrats justify their questions by pointing to Trump’s habit of making demonstrably false claims.

“It’s not normal behavior. I don’t know anybody in a position of responsibility that doesn’t know if they’re being rained on. And nobody I work with serially offers up verifiably false statements on an ongoing basis,”

So not hapy with dividing the nation by sex (all of them), race, wealth, and clothing manufacturer, The Democrats have decided to pray on mental health, which has invited criticism that they have gone too far...

“It’s divisive. The bottom line is, if Trump doesn’t succeed, we all fail. It’s time to give the guy a chance,” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.).

Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) both burst out laughing when told some Democratic colleagues were questioning Trump’s mental health.

“Are you serious?” Hunter asked. “Yeah, I don’t care what they say.”

“I think that’s a stretch,” Simpson said.

Furthermore, mental health professionals say the politicization comes at a cost. Political actors suggesting an opponent has psychological problems risks stigmatizing people with actual mental illnesses, they say.

“I think the politicization is troubling,” said Joshua Miller, a psychologist at the University of Georgia whose research focuses on pathological personality traits and personality disorders.

“We certainly wouldn’t want individuals to use mental illness as a weapon to harm others.”

Still when all you have an identity-politics hammer, every feeling-hurting problem is a nail.

Perhaps the Democrats should remember that, as Judge Jeanine notes, "the American people voted for Trump because he made sense to them..."

.@JudgeJeanine: "The American people voted for [@realdonaldTrump] because he makes sense to them." pic.twitter.com/dCV4HqCyBn

— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) February 17, 2017

"As Ye Sow..."

Submitted by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

Our deranged world is a product of deranged minds.

Philosophy begins with invariably difficult questions. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Is there a god or gods? What is right and what is wrong? How should groups of people be organized and function together? Ironically, when such questions are infrequently asked, when philosophy is generally ignored or disparaged, as it is now, is when it’s needed the most.

Political philosophy is the branch that addresses the question of how coercive power is to be distributed in a society. It’s a knotty issue, but one question provides clarification, enabling further analysis and leading to useful conclusions. Who owns a political unit’s resources? This question differentiates between governments that protect individual rights and property and those that don’t. It also highlights a key problem: on planet earth, every government falls into the latter category.

The United States’ founding documents pay tribute to individual rights and private properly. Some of the founders may have thought they were establishing a government subordinated to protection of individual rights, which would have been an historical first. However, none thought such a government would be easy to maintain, and their fears were borne out. The US government places prominently on the inglorious list of governments claiming ownership over everything within their dominion, defined as any place where they can exercise their coercive power.

To those who say the institution of inviolate private property still exists in the US, what asset can the US government not seize? The income tax gives it first claim on income. No real estate is exempt from eminent domain. Intellectual property claims are at the sufferance of the patent, trademark, and copyright authorities. Financial assets held within the banking system can be “bailed in,” and plans are afoot to ban cash. The already extensive range of assets subjected to civil asset forfeiture continues to expand. More ominously, assets can be seized from parties never adjudicated guilty. Conscription grants to the government the lives of the conscripted. The US government is no exception to the general rule, nothing is inviolate expect perhaps a person’s thoughts, and undoubtedly it’s working on that.

Individuals who assert the right to initiate aggression against whomever they choose are philosophically unhinged, candidates for an asylum or a penitentiary. Rejecting the first principle that must guide human interaction—that no one may rightfully initiate force against another person—such individuals have no rational foundation for their thoughts or actions. The “garbage in” of their philosophical premises produces “garbage out” emotional states, mental processes, and ultimately, lives. Having abandoned reason for coercion and violence, reality becomes a chaotic, incomprehensible void.

Governments’ coercive power allow them to take: might makes right. A philosophy that recognized a right of some individuals to steal from others fails on first principles; there is no logical distinction possible between the privileged and the subjugated. Does the aggregation of individuals into a unit which calling itself a government give them a right which none of them have individually? One could say that the aggregate was for the protection of its constituents’ persons, property, and rights, but a government so limited is acting as their constituents’ subordinate agent, exercising and enhancing their right of self-defense. Efforts have been made, notably the American experiment, but no government has ever been restricted in this manner.

No matter its guiding “ism,” every government has granted itself the power to initiate violence against its citizens. Just because the ruling agglomerate asserts this privilege doesn’t render it philosophically valid. What it does is legitimate the initiation of violence for any and all causes—domestic and foreign—the government deems proper.

Having violated the first principle of nonaggression, nothing can stop that philosophical default from trickling down to the subject population. The ragged thief who holds up a liquor store lacks the polish and articulation of the politician who asserts the government’s first claim on a nation’s production, the central banker who depreciates its currency, or the general bent on global dominance who wages offensive wars, but philosophically they’re soul mates. In fact, the thief has a moral one up on the others: he doesn’t claim to be protecting the values he destroys.

Millions have decried the violence that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, just as millions on the other side decried mostly illusory violence among Trump supporters during the campaign. However, not one in a thousand of those denouncing the violence as violations of fundamental civil liberties denounce the daily violations of fundamental liberties visited upon them by their own government. America’s corruption is so complete that those who insist that they are not fodder for the government, that their lives are their own, and that the only proper government is one subordinated to the protection of their individual rights—and maintain positions consistent with those principles—could hold a convention and not fill a high-school gym.

This small group is the victim of a terrifying pincer movement from above and below. When a society abandons itself to violence, “legal” and otherwise, it abandons itself to mindless irrationality driven by hate and antipathy towards every positive value. Violence is not a means to any end other than destruction and death; violence itself is the end. Humanity has been fed the same tripe for centuries: noble ends justify evil means. Violation of the first principle—the stricture against initiated aggression—bars consideration of the purported ends. A “discussion” with a gun is no discussion. Violence exercised in self-defense protects positive values, but when violence is initiated, destruction, death, and the depraved pleasure of loathsome minds are its only ends.

An individual who claims by word or deed the right to initiate violence - and the consequent rights to subjugate, injure, and kill - is a rabid, deranged, and dangerous animal. A government that asserts that right is a pack. In self-defense, the virtuous, if they are to protect their liberty, rights, and lives, must quarantine or kill the rabid. A necessary corollary of the stricture against initiated aggression is that we have the right to use all means necessary to defend ourselves from it—with pity, perhaps, but no remorse.

The chaos, the terror, of our deteriorating world is a true and faithful reflection of souls abandoned to hate. The free mind and its methods—intrepid curiosity, truth, and logic—stand as their ultimate enemy. If those who would oppose this destruction and death abandon their souls, they become the mindless evil they opposed. Those who defend their rights, values, and lives without surrendering their morality will rebuild from the rubble the kind of world in which they deserve to live. They will do so unobstructed—hate inevitably leads to its own destruction.

House Votes To Overturn Obama Gun Rule Banning Sales To The Mentally Impaired

The House continued to dismantle Obama"s legacy one item at a time, when on Thursday it struck down regulations that blocked gun ownership by some who have been deemed mentally impaired by the Social Security Administration.

The House voted 235-180 along party lines Thursday to repeal an Obama-era rule requiring the Social Security Administration to send records of some beneficiaries to the federal firearms background check system after they’ve been deemed mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs. The database is used to determine eligibility for buying a firearm.  

The rule, when implemented, would affect about 75,000 recipients of disability insurance and supplemental insurance income who require a representative to manage their benefits because of a disabling mental disorder, ranging from anxiety to schizophrenia. It applies to those between age 18 and full retirement age.  Critics said the rule stripped Second Amendment rights from people who are not dangerously mentally ill, such as those who have eating disorders or mental disorders that prevent them from managing their own finances.

“This is a slap in the face for those in the disabled community because it paints all those who suffer from mental disorders with the same broad brush,” said House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. “It assumes that simply because an individual suffers from a mental condition, that individual is unfit to exercise his or her Second Amendment rights.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, called the Social Security regulation “reckless, overly broad and an affront to the Second Amendment rights of people with disabilities." He introduced an identical resolution to reverse it in the Senate on Thursday with 25 Republican co-sponsors, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

“Whenever the government acts to limit the fundamental constitutional rights of citizens, it must do so carefully, lawfully and in a way that doesn’t unduly impact law-abiding Americans,” Grassley said in a statement.

The rule, which took effect Jan. 18 and sets a December compliance date, requires the agency to notify individuals of their possible prohibition from possessing or receiving firearms and their rights to appeal.

The National Rifle Association opposed the rule. While the group says it supports keeping guns away from the mentally ill, it said the determination about who is mentally ill should be left to the courts. “The Obama administration’s last minute, back-door gun grab would have stripped law-abiding Americans of their Second Amendment rights without due process,” said Chris Cox, the NRA’s top lobbyist.

Supporters of the rule said the step was necessary to keep guns away from people with mental disorders like schizophrenia and severe anxiety. Democrats agreed the government must not stigmatize those with disabilities but said this rule affects a small group with severe, long-term mental disorders preventing them from doing any work. Passage of the resolution puts others at risk, they said.

“These are not just people having a bad day,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif. “These are not people simply suffering from depression or anxiety. These are people with a severe mental illness who can’t hold any kind of job or make any decisions about their affairs. So the law says very clearly they shouldn’t have a firearm.”

According to The Hill, Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) accused Republicans of weakening the background check system. "The House charged ahead with an extreme, hastily written, one-sided measure that would make the American people less safe," she said. The Social Security Administration rule would have reported the disability recipients with severe mental disorders to the FBI"s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. House Republicans turned to the Congressional Review Act to overturn the regulation. The law allows lawmakers to roll back rules they disapprove of. Critically for Republicans, the resolutions cannot be filibustered in the Senate.

The regulation is among a host that Republicans aim to repeal under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to dismiss an outgoing administration’s recently enacted regulations. It requires only a simple majority vote in the Senate.

Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said House efforts to block five Obama regulations by the end of this week are “just the start.” The House has also voted to overturn a rule to protect streams from coal mining debris, a rule requiring federal contractors to disclose labor and worker safety violations, and another rule requiring oil, gas and minerals companies to disclose payments to foreign governments. “In the weeks ahead, we will act on more resolutions to deliver relief from excessive regulations,” Ryan said. “When you think about the fact that the Obama administration was issuing major regulations at a rate of one every three days, this is real sea change.”

Trump "Hope" Gap Nears 400 S&P Points

The trend in "actual" earnings has been dismal.. but the trend in "hope" has been exceptional. Will hope prove right?

The gap between "history" and "hope" is now almost 400 S&P points (and almost 5,000 Dow points) - With VIX heading towards single-digits, the market seems very sure that earnings will realize the "hope" in a straight line.

A Biased 2017 Forecast, Part 1

Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.” – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

 

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a live one hour interview with Michael Lewis at the Annenberg Center about his new book The Undoing Project. Everyone attending the lecture received a complimentary copy of the book. Being a huge fan of Lewis after reading Liar’s Poker, Boomerang, The Big Short, Flash Boys, and Moneyball, I was interested to hear about his new project. This was a completely new direction from his financial crisis books. I wasn’t sure whether it would keep my interest, but the story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and their research into the psychology of judgement and decision making, creating a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases, was an eye opener.

In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others. These rules work well under most circumstances, but they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, probability or rational choice theory. The resulting errors are called “cognitive biases” and many different types have been documented.

Heuristics usually govern automatic, intuitive judgments but can also be used as deliberate mental strategies when working from limited information. Kahneman and Tversky created the heuristics and biases research program, which studies how people make real-world judgments and the conditions under which those judgments are unreliable. Their research challenged the idea that human beings are rational actors, but provided a theory of information processing to explain how people make estimates or choices. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work in behavioral economics.

To put their research into terms the common person can understand, human decision making is extremely flawed due to our biases, feelings, irrational thought processes and beliefs in falsehoods. It’s over-confidence in our decision making ability that causes us the most problems. For the average person this can result in financial hardship, frustration or a premature death.

When high level government officials, bankers or corporate executives make flawed decisions due to their biases, it can mean war, financial disasters, depressions, or disastrous legislation like Obamacare. Hubris, egotism and faulty reasoning, as noted by Mark Twain one hundred and fifty years ago, can kill you and in some cases lead to war and unthinkable levels of death and destruction.

“It’s not what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.”  – Mark Twain

In the seven weeks since the election of Donald Trump as our next president, I’ve witnessed the largest case of hindsight bias in world history. Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism, is the inclination, after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, despite there having been little or no objective basis for predicting it.

On November 7 the “expert” pollsters like Nate Silver; every corporate mainstream media network, newspaper, and website; along with elitist economists, professors, Hollywood movie stars, Wall Street bankers, and billionaire oligarchs; were 100% sure Hillary Clinton was going to be elected president. Only the deplorables thought otherwise – and they spoke loudly. Putin had nothing to do with the result.

These very same “experts” and “deep thinkers” now act as if Trump’s election was foreseeable, predictable and the likely outcome. They bloviate about how and why he won as if they knew it was going to happen. When 99% of all establishment “experts” were sure Trump was going to be crushed in a Clinton landslide, why should anyone listen to a word they say?

The same people who didn’t see even the faintest possibility of a Trump victory now expect the ignorant masses to believe their analysis of what will happen next. I would like to attribute their obtuseness to cognitive biases, but I believe it is more insidious. The Deep State propaganda machine is hard at work spreading falsehoods.

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.” – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

The onslaught of 2017 predictions from a myriad of Wall Street “experts” talking their book, highly educated economists demonstrating their lack of prescience, mainstream media pundits peddling propaganda and cheerleaders cheering for their home teams, has already begun. I haven’t written an annual forecast article in a few years because I was tired of being wrong. Since I have no newsletters or books to sell, no investments to peddle, and no agenda to push, an annual forecast will just be my best guess at what will happen in 2017.

The two biases most likely to color my analysis are confirmation bias (The tendency to focus on information in a way that confirms my preconceptions) and pessimism bias (The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of negative things happening). My family and friends think I’m a pessimist. I think I’m a realist. I try to use data to back-up my conclusions, but as George Dvorsky points out, our brains often lead us astray.

“The human brain is capable of 10¹⁶ processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn’t mean our brains don’t have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we’re subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions.” – George Dvorsky

My predictions will be framed by my belief we are midway through a Fourth Turning era of crisis. The three catalysts framing this Fourth Turning are debt, civic decay, and global disorder. No amount of normalcy bias, optimism bias, over-confidence, or desire for the status quo, will take precedence over the uncontrollable mechanisms propelling this Fourth Turning.

We are in the midst of a once in a lifetime crisis and there is only one thing more frightening than not knowing what is coming next, and that is living in a world run by “experts” who think they know exactly what is going to happen next. These are the same “experts” who didn’t see the 2005 housing bubble, the 2008 financial collapse, the EU implosion, Brexit, or the Trump presidency.

“It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on.” –  Amos Tversky

I try to understand the world around me every day, but the hyper-complexity, noise, Deep State propaganda, and volume of data points is overwhelming to our easily distracted brains. I have constructed a story in my mind of how things will develop over the next five to ten years based upon the generational theory put forth by Strauss & Howe in their book The Fourth Turning. It is not a story with a happy ending.

I don’t have high confidence that I understand how it will play out and what specific events will propel history in the making. I can admit my deficiencies, while people in power with the ability to blow up the world overestimate their understanding of the world and ignore the role of chance in events.

“We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.” – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Knowing what I don’t know about the unknowns, I’ll try and use what I do know to make some prognostications about 2017:

Debt Forecast

It is fascinating to me no one seems all that worried about the systematically dangerous levels of global debt supporting essentially bankrupt governments, banks and consumers. Global debt stood at $142 trillion at the end of 2007, just prior to a worldwide financial meltdown, caused by too much bad debt in the financial system.

To “fix” this problem, central bankers around the globe ramped up their electronic printing presses to hyper-drive and created another $57 trillion of debt by mid-2014. They haven’t taken their foot off the gas since. Today, global debt most certainly exceeds $225 trillion and has surpassed 300% of global GDP. Rogoff and Reinhart made a pretty strong case that when debt to GDP exceeds 90%, disaster will follow.

Global debt issuance reached a record $6.6 trillion in 2016, with corporations accounting for $3.6 trillion – most of which was used to buy back their stock at all-time highs. What could possibly go wrong? The level of normalcy bias amongst financial “experts”, the intelligentsia, and the common man is breathtaking to behold. We are in the midst of the mother of all bubbles, never witnessed in the history of mankind, and we pretend everything is normal, with no consequences for our reckless disregard for honesty, rational thinking, or simple math.

The 2000 dot.com bubble and the 2008 housing bubble were one dimensional. This mother of all bubbles required the global coordination and unprecedented irresponsible intervention of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the Bank of England (BOE) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to lead the world to the brink of monetary disaster. The highly educated theorists running these central banks have created tens of trillions in unpayable debt while suppressing interest rates to zero or below at the behest of their Deep State masters.

The result is simultaneous bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate. The pin destined to pop all the bubbles is slightly higher interest rates. The 1% increase in the 10 Year Treasury is already causing havoc in the housing market, the bond market and is hammering pension funds. With the hundreds of trillions in globally interconnected derivatives primed to detonate, 2017 could be an explosive year.

Here are a few things I think could happen in 2017 on the economic front:

• The national debt stands at $19.9 trillion and will reach $20 trillion before Obama departs. With spending on automatic pilot and tax revenue in decline, the national debt will reach $21 trillion in 2017. With most of the debt financed short-term, the increase in rates will ratchet the interest on the debt from $433 billion to over $550 billion.


• With the CPI increasing by over 3% in the first few months of the year, the Fed will continue to raise rates, and the 10 Year Treasury will breach the 3% level.


• Home prices have surpassed the 2006 peak, even though existing home sales are still 20% below 2006 levels and housing starts are 50% below 2006 levels. The entire “recovery” has been engineered by the Fed and Wall Street at the high end of the market. With mortgage rates up 1% already, the further increase will result in existing home sales and housing starts falling by 20% in 2017 and home prices falling by 5% to 10%.

• The short-term OPEC agreement will allow oil prices to move back to $60 per barrel, further eating into consumer discretionary spending. Desperate fracking companies needing cash flow to service their debt will ramp up. Bankrupt or near bankrupt countries like Venezuela, Mexico, and Iran will also increase production. With a slowing global economy and surging supply, prices will collapse again into the $40s in the second half of the year.


• Holiday sales for the bricks and mortar retailers will be reported in January as lukewarm at best. By February, the store closing announcements will reach into the hundreds. Sears will finally declare bankruptcy and shutter at least 50% of their stores. Mall developers will begin to declare bankruptcy as vacancies and rising interest rates create a perfect storm.


• Consumer debt will reach the previous high of $1 trillion, as subprime student loan and auto debt continues to accumulate at an astounding pace. The spigot for student loans is likely to be tightened under Trump, with over 25% of the loans effectively in default. Auto sales (if you can call six year financing and 40% leases, sales) peaked in 2016. Millions of auto buyers are underwater on their loans, subprime auto loans are going into default quicker than you can say Cadillac Escalade, and higher interest rates will price out more potential suckers.


• The faux jobs recovery is running out of steam. With non-existent wage growth, surging costs for rent, health care, energy, and credit cards tapped out, American families will hunker down and reduce spending further. With consumer spending accounting for 68% of GDP, this will lead to an official recession by the middle of 2017.


• All the recent surveys showing consumer confidence soaring and optimism for 2017 are based on nothing but hope. The promises of a Trump administration will not come to fruition until 2018 at the earliest. He will meet resistance from Democrats across the board and resistance amongst his own party. His grand plans for massive tax cuts and spending increases will run into the reality of $1 trillion annual deficits. As reality sets in, and recession arrives, the unwarranted optimism will fade rapidly. Tax cuts will be tempered by reduced spending plans.


• The USD hitting fourteen year highs against the basket of worldwide currencies does not bode well for bringing manufacturing jobs back to make America great again. The reason for the strong dollar is because we are the best looking horse in the glue factory. With Europe and Japan promoting negative interest rates and the Fed slowly raising rates, the dollar will continue to rise. This will hurt our manufacturing businesses, increase our $500 billion annual trade deficit further, and depress the profits of our global corporations.


• With rising inflation, rising interest rates, stagnant wages, falling corporate profits, stock valuations at all-time highs, and corporations no longer able to finance stock buy backs at no cost, the stock market will finally hit the wall after a seven year bull market. This last surge of euphoria, based on nothing but Trumpmania sweeping Wall Street, will constitute the final blow-off. The market is currently valued to provide nominal returns of less than 1% over the next twelve years and is likely to experience an abrupt sell-off of 50% in the near future. I believe the near future will be 2017. I think the powers that be will be testing Trump’s mettle in his first year to see if he’ll play ball and do their bidding.

“The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.”  – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

In Part Two of this article I will ponder how much further our civic decay and global disorder will advance in 2017. Over-confidence, hubris and arrogance of our leaders will be the driving factors.